The young man pressed the button, and the elevator started up. It was slow, and as Dino had predicted, noisy. They squeaked and rattled their way up the building. Stone reckoned it was twenty-five or thirty stories, but he forgot to count.

Before he had expected it, the elevator came to a sudden stop. The young man held up a hand, then pointed. “We’ve got some cover,” he said. A few steps from the elevator there was a stack of what looked like bags of cement or plaster.

“So have they,” Stone said. “Let’s go.”

The young man opened the door and ran to the stack, sheltering behind it, and was closely followed by his companion, Stone, and Dino.

They stopped and listened. From somewhere behind the stack, music was playing.

The young man stood up straight, peered over the stack, and ducked back behind it, shaking his head.

Stone stood up and looked. A dozen feet beyond the stack was another stack.

“Let’s get over there,” he said.

The two young men led the way to the next stack, then the leader had another look. This time he didn’t duck back but walked around the stack and stopped.

His companion followed, and so did Stone and Dino. They were standing on a floor that was empty of anything, except the two stacks of bags.

“Let’s check it out,” Dino said.

The four men spread out and began searching the floor, while the music got louder. The floor was dimly lit by a dozen hanging lightbulbs scattered around the ceiling. In the middle of the floor were two sawhorses with a plank laid across them. On the plank rested a radio, plugged into one of the wires from the ceiling.

Stone turned it off. “Wrong building,” he said.

34

It was late when they got back to Marcel’s apartment, and Stone went straight to bed without dinner. His glimmer of hope had been dashed in Naples, and the experience had been exhausting. He slept poorly.

He joined Dino and Viv at breakfast.

“You look tired,” Viv said.

“Tired and hungry.” He ate a large breakfast, had two cups of strong Italian coffee, and felt better. The butler told them that Marcel had gone downstairs to his office for a meeting.

Jim Lugano showed up not long after breakfast. “I thought you’d like to know that our survey of buildings in Naples got the same results you did by driving around. The building you entered was our best hope.”

“I think you should do a survey of buildings under construction by Casselli Costruzione,” Stone said.

“I’ve no idea how many there are,” Jim replied. “I’d never heard of the company until yesterday.”

“That’s probably because Casselli isn’t building in Rome, for whatever reason. Maybe the Italians can do a computer search on building permits with his company’s name on them.”